The 6s and iPad Pro are a good demonstration of the importance of designing systems <i>tastefully</i>. In the rest of ARM-land, manufacturers are enthralled by octa-core designs that take up lots of die space but sit idle in most consumer workloads. Apple, in comparison, has stuck to two relatively low-clocked cores to deliver balanced performance.<p>When my iPhone got stolen, I briefly had a Droid Maxx 2 (Verizon's version of the Moto X Play), which was the laggiest phone I've ever owned (and that includes a $130 Lumia 620). Its Snapdragon 615 has a GPU so anemic it can't handle even basic Google Play Store animations without stuttering. But it's got eight cores, which apparently checks the boxes of Android ODMs because the 615 is used in nearly every upper mid-range Android phone. That's what happens when spec-heavy marketing drives your system architecture.<p>And the focus on specs (cores, clockspeed), ironically results in worse performance. Under sustained load, the Nexus 6p spends most of its time under a gigahertz because of thermal throttling: <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/9820/the-google-nexus-6p-review/4" rel="nofollow">http://www.anandtech.com/show/9820/the-google-nexus-6p-revie...</a>. The 6s and 6s plus, in comparison, can run a graphics-intensive benchmark until the battery dies while maintaining a consistent framerate: <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-apple-iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-review/8" rel="nofollow">http://www.anandtech.com/show/9686/the-apple-iphone-6s-and-i...</a>.